Carlos Fuentes - Adam in Eden

I embraced L, and we both understood that, come what may, we would remain together. The distancing of the last few weeks turned out to be a necessary intermission to refresh and strengthen our relationship. Did we owe this favor — having brought us closer together — to Góngora’s police brutality? With L pressed against me, I quickly thought: a) Góngora was beside himself because he didn’t kill Don Celes and therefore couldn’t obtain his beloved Priscila by making her an orphan; b) only without Don Celes’s dogmatic Catholicism would Priscila divorce me; c) only divorced from me would she become united with a fate worse than death, married life with the horrendous Adam Góngora; d) the King of Bakery’s murder was frustrated by mistaken identity; e) the person responsible for the mistake was the freed criminal known as Big Snake but whose real name was Gustavo Huerta Matthews; f) the maiden name “Matthews” was an added disguise of Big Snake, because his mother was a Oaxacan laundress by the name of Mateos who, when questioned, first denied being Big Snake’s mother, and immediately broke out in tears over her son’s wickedness, the result of his having left the country for the big city; g) Góngora’s henchmen have begun a national and international hunt for the fugitive known as Big Snake, because Góngora swears that nobody betrays him, and a mistake is the same as a betrayal; h) the inmate known as Chachacha, locked up in Santa Catita prison, has denied knowing the whereabouts of her lover Big Snake; i) the above must be true, because the so-called Chachacha was subjected to harsh interrogations and didn’t change her tune — I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, and by the way go fuck your mother; j) having exhausted the trail of Big Snake, Góngora turned his attention to (me) Gorozpe; k) as Don Celestino didn’t die, putting on hold Gorozpe and Priscila’s divorce and Priscila and Góngora’s resulting nuptials, k 1) Gorozpe’s death will make Priscila a widow, allowing her union with Góngora; l) therefore, Gorozpe must die; m) but first he must suffer; n) how to make Gorozpe suffer?; o) by finding out what he does outside the office; o 1) he returns home, o 2) he eats at restaurants in the Zona Rosa and downtown, o 3) he strolls the streets near Reforma; p) we follow him during those strolls: where does he go?; q) at your orders, Chief: he goes in secret to an apartment located on Oslo near the corner of X; r) who lives there?; s) the person who lives there goes by the name of L, s 1) L what? s 2) just L; t) your orders are: to go into L’s apartment, to destroy, sow disorder, frighten, and mistreat L, that’s all; u) make sure that Gorozpe understands this as a time-sensitive message.

“It was just a warning,” said L, in my arms.

I was silent.

L insisted: “What kind of warning?”

I said, “A very inopportune warning.”

After we’d made love in the rubble, I finally explained: “A double warning. A personal warning. If I don’t divorce Priscila, they’ll turn her into a widow. Jesus! And you, baby, they’ll kill you first so I suffer more. Mary and Joseph!”

And that’s not all he’s up to. Aside from the petty details of domestic life, Góngora gets rid of a man whose power threatens him, a man — I, Adam Gorozpe, am that man — in whom he — Góngora — has confided and to whom he has proposed a corrupt power grab. A man who has realized ( I have realized thanks to the invaluable help of Xocoyotzín the gardener) that Góngora embellishes the statistics of death with the lives of innocent young men whom he orders killed before presenting them as deadly guerrillas. I know — the man whose voice has been addressing readers knows — that Góngora locks up innocent people and sometimes one, or a few, guilty ones, to sway public opinion, in the guise of the guarantor of justice, albeit one who locks up middle-class citizens with mortgage problems and a few millionaires to add a little spice and to quell public outrage.

“He’s a genius!” I despair.

“But, baby, you’re smarter than he is.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Listen to me. And don’t think I’m speaking as an aggrieved party.”

“L, what matters most is, did they see you?”

“No. I hid in the bathroom. They shouted at me.”

“Did you shout back at them?”

“Are you crazy? They threatened me. They didn’t see me. They don’t know your secret.”

“And, baby, you’re the only one who knows it.”

“Nobody else has ever seen you naked?”

“Yes, just a prostitute, a long time ago, and now she’s dead.”

I am led away from the zoo by Abelardo Holguín and the veiled lady who had identified herself: “Sagrario Guadalupe, at your service.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my house,” says the woman in mourning from head to toe. “Is it far?” I ask, afraid of showing myself in public given the threats I’ve described.

“No, it’s right over there,” murmurs the mysterious lady.

Where they are taking me — and not the identity of the veiled lady — is the mystery.

“Don’t worry, Señor Gorozpe, we won’t leave the forest or the park.”

That seemed true. The couple led me toward a thick grove to a place I recognized as the “forest of the blind.”

“Close your eyes,” Sagrario Guadalupe all but ordered, blindfolding me.

“Rather, breathe in the scents,” Abelardo said more softly.

And yes, with my eyes closed I smelled grass, roses, and Montezuma Cypress, which suddenly became moss and shadow, humidity and age. A metallic-sounding door closed behind us. I moved ahead blindly until Sagrario ordered Abelardo to take off my blindfold.

I opened my eyes in a stone chamber. Everything there was hard, impenetrable, a great secret dungeon in the midst of the center of Mexico City and my emblematic forest. We’d hardly walked at all. We couldn’t have been far from the zoo, or from Chapultepec Castle. Yet here the sensation of “forest” and “castle” disappeared as if flattened by some great metal mass. We could only be — this adventurer ventures — inside a secret cave in the middle of the city’s busiest park.

Sagrario and even Abelardo supported me by holding my arms, as though I were in danger of falling from some high precipice. . I shook them off, angered by this excessive precaution. I wasn’t the kind of guy who would need their support. I may not have known where I was, but I knew I was somewhere . Wherever the couple led me, I knew how to remain standing, firm, armored against any surprise. Such a macho guy.

And what a surprise awaited me.

The empty space before me became light, and in its center, elevated on some kind of little altar, appeared the Boy already described to me by L, the ten- or eleven-year-old Boy, with his white robe and his halo of blond curls. A very polite Boy, he said, “Welcome, sir.” A frightening Boy. Not just because of his sudden appearance right here, in the bowels of Chapultepec Castle, but because of his perfect symmetry with his public image as photographed by the press and as described by L. In other words, any semblance of “normality” beyond the public pulpit was forbidden in this secret space. Just as L had said, the Boy was luminous, and he was staring at me with authority and with love, as L had also reported, “a powerful love mixed with a great authority.” And with a touch, as L had explained, of menace.

I got my bearings and dared to ask him, remembering L, but imposing myself on Sagrario: “Your wings? What happened to your wings?” The Boy laughed and turned his back to me: he didn’t have any wings. Sagrario groaned, then attached the wings to the Boy’s back before returning to her place beside Abelardo.